Firestruck
by lawless523
Summary: Shuichi’s bad luck with cooking causes a kitchen fire and the sacrifice of Eiri’s favorite pan. Shuichi in turn pleads for Eiri to change a bad habit of his, but does Eiri listen? Heck no! One-shot, two chapters, COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

_**Firestruck**_

Rating: M for bad language and innuendo. Pretty mild stuff, all told, especially considering no one's put tape over Eiri's potty mouth yet.

Warning: This story deals with an M/M pairing. If this disturbs you, why are you reading Gravitation fanfiction? LEAVE NOW AND DO NOT READ.

Disclaimers: I don't own the rights to these characters and I don't make any money from them; Maki Murakami, Gentosha, TokyoPop and RightStuf do. I do, however, let the guys out to play . . . with each other.

Summary: Shuichi's bad luck with cooking causes a kitchen fire and the sacrifice of Eiri's favorite pan. Shuichi in turn pleads for Eiri to change a bad habit of his, but does Eiri listen? Heck no! One-shot, two chapters, COMPLETE.

Word Count: 2,948 words, including introduction and author's note.

_What word begins with "f" and ends with "uck"?_

_Firetruck -_

_Popular children's riddle_

_Chapter 1. Bad Luck_

Bad Luck had finally finished preparing new songs in anticipation of recording them the following week. The group's members were enjoying a well-deserved break after two weeks of last-minute changes, hasty rearrangements that tried Suguru's patience, harried rehearsals, and several all-night recording sessions. As a result, Bad Luck's lead singer and songwriter Shuichi Shindou, heartthrob of millions of squealing, drooling Japanese schoolgirls, was home on a Friday afternoon trying to make lunch.

Unfortunately, his performance in the kitchen usually left something to be desired. He could barely boil water without supervision. Forget actual cooking. He burned bacon and toast, melted utensils in the microwave, spilled whatever he was making all over the counter and floor, and generally made a mess.

He lived with his boyfriend of several years, popular romance novelist Eiri Yuki, who owned the apartment and paid the bills for it. Eiri was possessive of anything he considered his. That included his apartment as well as Shuichi.

That is why Eiri had, in terms laced with profanity, forbidden Shuichi from doing anything more in the kitchen than using the microwave to heat beverages or packaged food like instant noodles and frozen pizzas. Anything else was to be left to Eiri, who was, if he did say so himself, a passable cook. Shuichi, on the other hand, had burned the food he was cooking while on a televised cooking contest, continuing his impressive record of rendering food nearly inedible.

Today, however, Shuichi's early arrival home was unexpected and Eiri was out, either walking around the nearest park wrestling with a passage from his latest novel or at the nearest convenience store buying himself more cigarettes, pocky for Shuichi, and the celebrity gossip magazines that were his secret vice. As usual, he hadn't left a note, so Shuichi didn't know which it was.

Shuichi sighed and pondered his dilemma. He really needed to eat lunch and he hadn't stopped to purchase any takeout because he had expected Eiri to be home. Damn it, he should be home. He was always home during the day; after Shuichi moved in, Eiri had turned into even more of a homebody than before. Calling up to order something would take too long; Shuichi knew that all his favorite places nearby would be busy filling existing orders during lunch hour.

Well, there was nothing for it but to make whatever was simplest and least likely to make a mess and bear the consequences. He'd better hurry before Eiri returned and found him in the kitchen. An angry Eiri was truly a scary sight. Since it didn't take much to set him off, it was a sight Shuichi saw more often than he wanted to.

Shuichi pulled out a package of instant ramen, ran water into a pot, put the pot on the stove, and turned the burner to "high". He sat down on the couch, forgetting to put the lid on to hasten boiling.

He turned on the television to watch something to pass the time until the water boiled and he could add the noodles and the seasoning packet. He found a music special about Nittle Grasper and settled in to watch and sing along with Ryuichi Sakuma, his boyhood idol.

He almost forgot about the ramen and the boiling pot until he eventually heard the noise of hissing steam, accompanied by water spilling over the side of the pot. He got up and discovered a boiling waterfall.

He turned the heat on the burner down, nearly scalding himself in the process, and put the seasoning packet and the noodles in. He went back to the living room and sat down again, neglecting to set the timer that would tell him when the noodles were done.

So far, he had escaped without serious injury to himself or the kitchen. Between his fascination with the show and his tiredness from the long hours of painstakingly working on the new songs, which were highly tedious as they mostly involved back and forth between the band's two instrumentalists, he dozed and listened intermittently and forgot all about his lunch.

He woke to the acrid smell of smoke and the blaring of the smoke detector. He scrambled off the couch and tried to enter the kitchen but was beaten back by the smoke. He had the presence of mind to grab a towel and wrap it around his nose and mouth, which enabled him to run into the kitchen long enough to see that all the water had boiled out of the pot and that the noodles were now a stringy burnt black mass. The bottom of the pan was emitting strange fumes. Most disturbing, the burner itself had caught on fire.

He quickly darted in to turn the burner off and looked around, desperately trying to remain level-headed. He couldn't panic! That would prove he was as useless in an emergency as Yuki always said he was.

Although he'd acted decisively to ensure that the situation didn't get any worse, he had no idea how to make it any better. Flames still flared from the burner and the smoke detector still blared. After a few seconds' reflection during which he racked his brain for any knowledge of fire prevention and drew a blank other than a faint memory of 'stop, drop, and roll,' which he didn't think would be very helpful, he decided PANIC was his best, and probably only, option. He completely forgot that Yuki kept a fire extinguisher in the kitchen for this very purpose.

His emotions were roiling just like the pot had been before all the water evaporated. Yuki was going to be livid with him! He'd probably be locked out of the bedroom for a week when he'd been looking forward to some time alone with his lover.

It dawned on him that he should call the fire department, since he didn't know what to do.

He quickly dialed the emergency number. An operator answered, "Tokyo emergency phone line. What is your emergency, please?"

"My-my-my boyfriend's apartment is on fire and…um…um…."

"Your what is on fire?"

Sighing inwardly, Shuichi started over, trying to keep a lid on his emotions.

"There's a – a kitchen fire here in my boyfriend's apartment." It occurred to the higher functioning levels of Shuichi's brain that he was providing more information than was absolutely necessary, but the panicked mammalian brain that was currently in control didn't care.

"Where is your– um – boyfriend's apartment?" the operator asked.

"It's – it's –on Shinjuku-1," Shuichi choked out, his chest tightening.

"What street number?"

"It's, um, Nishi-Shinjuku 7, umm, I'm not sure of the next two numbers. I know they're odd numbers. Maybe it's 7-5-9? No, I think it's 7-3-9. I'm not really sure. The numbers out front are very small…"

The operator sighed audibly. "Can you tell me the name of the building, at least?"

"Oh yeah, it's the Kiritsubo Apartments." The operator proceeded to look the address up in the database they relied on for situations such as this, although it was usually small children and elderly people who were as confused about their address as this caller was.

"And the apartment number?"

"It's 18 um – no, the building's eighteen stories, his apartment is on the second floor –"

"Do you remember the apartment number?"

"2B – no, that's not right – 2D, maybe? I'm not exactly sure – I just know how to get here – I've never sent anything here."

Shuichi could practically hear the operator shaking his head and rolling his eyes. He continued hopefully, "The smoke detector is making a big racket. You can probably hear it. Can't they just follow that?"

After a long pause, the operator responded, "Well, we'll hope that none of the other alarms or the building's smoke detectors go off in the meantime. I've dispatched the firefighters. They should be on their way now."

He heaved a sigh of relief once he heard the siren approaching. . . until he also heard footsteps coming down the hallway and a key being inserted in the lock. He held his breath as the person on the other side of the door realized the door was unlocked and turned the doorknob.

Eiri stood in the doorway, plastic bag hanging off his arm, with his mouth agape and a glare evincing a combination of astonishment and vexation on his face. Shuichi marveled at the way he made 'pissed off' look sexy.

After remaining frozen like a statue for a few seconds, Eiri stepped into the entryway. He was so nonplussed he didn't bother to remove his shoes.

He found his voice and said, "What. The. Fuck. IS GOING ON HERE!!!" His voice got louder and louder, and higher in pitch, with each syllable.

"Ummmm," Shuichi responded in a tiny voice, "I . . . kinda burned some noodles I left on the . . ."

Eiri, glaring at him, said, "YOU FUCKING MORON, SINCE WHEN ARE YOU ALLOWED TO COOK? DIDN'T I SPECIFICALLY FORBID YOU FROM DOING SO ON PAIN OF DEATH, HOPEFULLY YOUR VERY PAINFUL DEATH AND NOT MINE?"

Shuichi wasn't surprised that Eiri yelled at him, but his lover's callous words made him draw his breath in and bite his lip to try to stop the tears that threatened to spill from his eyes.

In the meantime, the smoke was getting worse, despite the burner being turned off, and the alarm continued to blare, so shaking his head and rolling his eyes, Eiri grabbed Shuichi's hand by the wrist and yanked him into the entryway and out the door. Leaving the door unlocked, Eiri pinned Shuichi up against the wall of the hallway far enough away from the door that the noise gave him less of a headache and he felt it was safe enough that they wouldn't burst into flame anytime soon.

"Shuichi," he said in a somewhat calmer, but still irritated voice, "what happened? Are you okay?" He reached out and touched Shuichi's face.

Shuichi's lips trembled and tears once more threatened to run down his face, this time at his lover's tender expression of concern. Apparently Eiri had realized that his hostility had freaked Shuichi out and had decided a calmer demeanor would help. However, his abrupt changes in mood gave Shuichi emotional whiplash.

Just as Eiri started leaning forward, thinking that maybe the best way to calm Shuichi down enough to tell him what had happened was to give him a brief kiss, the downstairs door opened and the fire brigade ran up the stairs. He stopped, not wishing to cause more gossip than already existed about their relationship, and faced the first of the firefighters to run down the hallway.

"It's in here," he said. "My roommate called it in."

Shuichi gave him a questioning look, to which Eiri responded by putting his index finger to his lips and giving him a stare meant to convey that it was none of anyone else's damn business that they were more than roommates. The fact that there were two occupied bedrooms in the apartment – Shuichi used his as an office and to store his stuff, and sometimes slept on the bed there when he was banished from Eiri's bedroom or one of them was ill and needed to sleep separately from the other while recuperating – would help in this endeavor not to let anyone know who didn't already know from reading the gossip columns that they were a couple.

The firefighters rushed into the apartment. One of them, presumably the one in charge, stayed in the hallway to ask questions. "Can one of you tell me what happened?"

Realizing Shuichi might still need time to compose himself, Eiri pointed to him and said, "He'll have to give you the details. I wasn't here when it happened." He held up the plastic bag that was still hanging from his wrist. "I heard the fire engines while I was walking home from the store and I arrived here to find…this."

The firefighter swiveled his head to look at Shuichi. "Sir?" he said.

Shuichi cleared his throat and did his best to compose himself. "Uh," he said, "I'd arrived home early and needed to make lunch, so I got one of those packets of instant ramen and seasoning out and put water on to boil. When it did, I put the noodles and seasoning in…and then I'm afraid I sorta dozed off and let the water boil out of the pan…." His voice trailed off and he looked sheepish.

Eiri tried to suppress his irritation and rage at Shuichi for ignoring his strictures against cooking, especially when he wasn't around to save Shuichi from his mistakes. After all, he hadn't established the rule to be mean, or at least not mostly to be mean; he was looking out for the little idiot. The person most likely to suffer if something went wrong while he was cooking was Shuichi. Eiri couldn't remember how many times he'd had to put cold compresses on burns or bandage cuts on Shuichi's fingers when Shuichi put his limbs in mortal danger. The rule was more for Shuichi's benefit than his, wasn't it?

He tried to make a joke of it. "My friend here has bad luck" – Shuichi gave him a funny look at the use of the phrase – "with kitchen utensils and such. This is just an extreme case. We're both really sorry to have inconvenienced you." He turned to Shuichi and gave him a look that plainly said, 'And we're going to have a long, painful discussion about this later on, when there are no witnesses.' Shuichi mouthed a silent 'I'm sorry.'

The firefighter waved his hand and said, "Don't worry about it. That's what we're here for. Kitchen fires aren't out of the ordinary, although they usually occur later in the day than this, especially after people have had a little too much to drink and forget they're even making dinner." Then he went inside.

They waited outside, standing next to each other leaning against the wall. Suddenly the smoke alarm stopped. They both let out a sigh of relief, Eiri because he didn't have to listen to the damn thing anymore and Shuichi because he knew what a relief the silence would be to Eiri.

Eventually the firefighters trooped out of the apartment. One of them was holding the offending pot with what looked like tongs. The two men looked at it. "This is what caused it," he said cheerfully. "We'll take it and dispose of it."

"You're paying to replace it," Eiri hissed at Shuichi. "That was one of my favorite pans!"

The firefighters obtained the contact information they needed from the two of them, showed Eiri, as the owner of the apartment and thus the one legally responsible for the repairs, what had been damaged – the stove was a mess and there were scorch marks on the wall behind the stove – and what needed to be done to fix it, and left him contemplating an unpleasant call to his insurance agent.

Just before they left, the lead firefighter gave them what looked like a smirk, and Eiri thought uncomfortably that it looked like the local firefighters knew the nature of their relationship, despite his efforts to keep it under wraps. Perhaps someone had been snooping in the bedroom?

Even though Eiri was glad that Shuichi hadn't been hurt, he hardly let him know it. Instead, he harassed him mercilessly about the incident, although Eiri would have claimed it was just playful teasing. Shuichi apologized over and over again, but that didn't stop him either. He told all their friends and acquaintances about it, some of them several times over, until they finally told him they didn't need to be reminded.

Since Shuichi would hardly know which pot to get or where to find it at the store, Eiri condescended to accompany him there to purchase a replacement pot, and he made him clean the entire stove by himself. He complained loudly about the cost of repairs, even though most of it was covered by his insurance.

A/N: This chapter was inspired by the time I left a pot of frozen peas boiling on the stove in a dorm kitchen until all the water had boiled away and the pan was ruined. Fortunately, no fire ensued. I have, however, caused stovetop fires recently as a result of flammable liquids spilling on the electric burner and crud that had built up underneath it. I can attest that a fiery burner is a disconcerting sight. We took care of it ourselves and didn't need to call the fire department, however.

The title's not a typo. Read the author's note at the end of the second chapter for more information on where the title came from.


	2. Chapter 2

Rating: M for innuendo and implied sex. There's also some nudity. This one's a little rougher than the last chapter because of when and where it takes place.

Warning: This story deals with an M/M pairing and includes references to sexual paraphernalia common to yaoi. If this disturbs you, why are you reading Gravitation fanfiction? LEAVE NOW AND DO NOT READ.

Disclaimers: I don't own the rights to these characters and I don't make any money from them; Maki Murakami, Gentosha, TokyoPop and RightStuf do. I do, however, let the guys out to play . . . with each other.

Summary: Shuichi's bad luck with cooking caused a kitchen fire and the sacrifice of Eiri's favorite pan. Shuichi in turn pleads for Eiri to change a bad habit of his, but does Eiri listen? Heck no! Implied Eiri/Shu. One-shot, two chapters, COMPLETE.

Word Count: 3,250, including introduction and author's note.

_What word begins with "f" and ends with "uck"?  
__Firetruck -  
__Popular children's riddle_

_Chapter 2. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes_

Eiri had lucked out. He hadn't been smoking a cigarette when he arrived home the day of the kitchen fire, although he had, as Shuichi thought, been out purchasing cigarettes, beer, gossip magazines, and, for Shuichi, pocky.

Eiri was seriously addicted to nicotine and smoked practically around the clock. Every time Shuichi turned around he was holding a cigarette between his fingers or had one stuffed in his mouth. It wasn't surprising that a faint haze of cigarette smoke was a permanent fixture in the apartment, or that Shuichi's cologne struggled for dominance on his body with the aroma of burning tobacco. Shuichi thought it was just another way Eiri claimed him as his, like dogs peeing to mark their territory.

Eiri even kept cigarettes lit while he and Shuichi were having sex and when he was trying to get to sleep. Many a night he fell asleep with a cigarette butt hanging out of his mouth which Shuichi then gingerly removed and put in the ashtray. Sometimes the ashes fell on the sheets. Once they even caused a cigarette burn, which meant Eiri had to throw those sheets out because he couldn't stand looking at or lying on less than perfection. It nearly killed him too because they were 600-thread count Egyptian cotton sheets.

Since the kitchen fire, Shuichi had been quietly but steadily lobbying for Eiri to quit smoking in the bedroom, arguing that it was a fire hazard in addition to being bad for their health. The acrid smell of cigarette smoke also irritated Shuichi's throat and lungs, which as a singer constituted his livelihood.

Eiri ignored Shuichi's pleas, feeling that to respond would give his complaints legitimacy and thus give Shuichi too much leverage over him. Eiri knew that his smoking was bad for his lover and regreted continuing in spite of it, but he was so addicted to it and found it so relaxing that he couldn't imagine what life would be like without his cancer sticks. His nerves were shot as it was; what kind of raving lunatic would he be without them?

That was one of the reasons Shuichi was realistic enough not to lobby for Eiri to quit smoking altogether. He had the same qualms about what Eiri's personality would be like without his precious cigarettes. So far, however, even his modest effort to get Eiri to stop smoking in the bedroom had been futile.

One night several months after the fire brigade's visit, Eiri sat cross-legged on the couch with an ashtray next to him. His cigarette was perched precariously between the fingers of his right hand**, **the ash lengthening and about to fall off into the ashtray of its own accord. Shuichi, who was sprawled on the other L of the sectional couch, wished that Eiri would pay more attention to the placement of the cigarette in relation to the ashtray. He was entirely too casual about it, in Shuichi's opinion.

Since Eiri had the utmost confidence that the detritus of his cigarettes would fall where he wanted them to without any conscious effort on his part – after all, he'd been smoking for years without incident – he paid no particular attention to it. As he continued to smoke, he flicked the cigarette toward the ashtray; however, despite his confidence in his abilities, some stray ashes fell on the couch. Fortunately, they weren't enough to spark a blaze, so they merely settled in the cushions like smoky dust, where they became the cleaning crew's problem.

As he indulged in a glass from a bottle of twenty-year-old single-malt scotch Tohma had purchased for him while in London on business, Eiri's cigarette handling skills became more and more careless, to the point where Shuichi was tempted to slide next to him on the couch and hold the cigarette for him.

After Shuichi watched Eiri juggle his cigarettes and the ashtray for the rest of the evening, including when a lit cigarette rolled off the ashtray and onto the couch, where Eiri lazily rescued it, they got ready for bed. Eiri turned off his laptop, set up the coffeemaker (Shuichi was now barred from using any appliances that produced heat), and brought what was left of his second glass of Scotch into the bedroom.

Later, Eiri and Shuichi were relaxing in bed after a spirited round of lovemaking. Eiri was curled up on his side and snuggled next to Shuichi with his head and one shoulder resting in the crook of Shuichi's neck and on one of his shoulders. Eiri was holding a cigarette in his right hand, and the ashes were slowly falling, mostly on Shuichi.

Shuichi jerked away suddenly and brushed more ash away. "Can't you put that out, or at least down?" he asked, a little irritated. "You're getting cigarette ash all over me. I am not your personal ashtray. And you know I hate the smell."

Eiri sighed. He thought this was all part of Shuichi's campaign to persuade, cajole, and harass him into abandoning smoking in the bedroom. Eiri still thought of himself as more mature and responsible than Shuichi and couldn't believe that he would be so careless as to cause a problem. It was only senile old men like his father who did that.

In response to Shuichi's plea, he put the cigarette down, but he didn't roll over and watch what he was doing, so he didn't realize that he had placed it on the corner of the nightstand instead of putting it in the ashtray. The nightstand was covered in extremely flammable lacquer.

He wasn't sure if it was the scotch he'd drunk in an effort to unwind, the endless hours of typing, or the lack of sleep, but he immediately fell into a deep, if troubled, sleep. He started awake when the smoke detector went off. Was he dreaming about the kitchen fire again? He sometimes had nightmares about it.

He sat up, looked around, and realized he'd fallen asleep with the light they left on during sex still on. By the dim light of the lamp, he saw with horror that the nightstand had started smoldering and that ashes were falling on the bed and threatening to start a blaze. Even as he realized this, the sheet and mattress flared up.

He elbowed Shuichi, practically knocking the smaller man out of bed, and hissed, "Get up! There's a fire!"

"What, again?" Shuichi said sleepily.

They scrambled out of bed, Eiri jerking Shuichi out of bed when he didn't move fast enough. He was going to have to call the fire department.

It registered in his somewhat inebriated brain that they had better find something to cover themselves with before the firefighters arrived if they didn't want to be seen naked. That would certainly cause its share of smirks and stares. The raw smell of sex still hung in the air, making it clear what they had been doing recently even if they weren't naked. The smell of smoke might be enough to hide it, but he wouldn't bet his life on it.

Eiri grabbed the cordless phone to call the fire department as he ran down the apartment hallway.

"Hello?" he said when the operator answered. "I'm Uesugi Eiri, and my apartment's on fire. The address is 7-3-9 Shinjuku-1 Road."

"Thank you, sir," the operator said. "What floor are you on?"

"The second. The apartment number is 2C. Please hurry! The fire is in the bedroom. I'm going to close the door but I don't want it spreading further."

"What part of the bedroom is involved, sir?"

"A nightstand and the bed. Look, can you hurry?"

"The firefighters are on their way. They should be there in a few minutes. Just stay outside out of harm's way until they get there, Uesugi-san."

Eiri hung up and grabbed a _yukata_ from behind the bathroom door. He thought about getting the fire extinguisher from the kitchen but decided it was too far away and there was too much smoke in the bedroom already anyway. He closed the bedroom door so as not to feed it more oxygen.

Shuichi was still yawning and hadn't yet done anything to cover himself. Eiri yanked his arm again and yelled, "Get something to wear, you dolt! Only I get to see you naked like that!"

Shuichi's response was to wrap a flimsy towel around his waist. Eiri shrugged, realizing it was too late and too dangerous to go back into the bedroom. They'd just have to live with whatever reaction they got from the firefighters.

They went out the front door and Eiri looked out the front hallway window while they waited for the firefighters to arrive. A teenage girl peeked out of a nearby door to see what the commotion was about. She stared for a moment, smiled widely, giggled, and closed the door. Eiri was so glad they were providing their impressionable neighbors such amusement.

He saw the firetruck careen around the corner, sirens blaring and tires screaming, and stop abruptly in front of the building. He slumped and held his head in his hands awaiting the firefighters' arrival. This was a golden opportunity for Shuichi to rub it in and pay him back for the ribbing he had given him over the kitchen fire.

Once again, the firefighters ran up the stairs and down the hallway. It was as if a movie were replaying the same scene, except this one was at night under the glow of the soft hallway lights. Eiri didn't recognize any of the firefighters from before, although he wasn't entirely awake either.

They seemed to recognize them, though. Some of them grinned at them, and the man who stayed with them to ask questions mentioned that the squad had just been there a few months before to put out a kitchen fire. "Bad luck, huh?" he asked.

Maybe they kept computerized records of all the addresses they visited, Eiri thought, or maybe the dispatcher told them that a similar call had come in a few months back. He was hoping that the explanation was anything other than that they were the objects of interest to the firefighters on whom their lives depended.

It seemed like the firefighters lingered in the apartment longer this time than before. Eiri found himself wondering what they'd left exposed on the nightstands. Was their lube there, or hidden among the sheets? Were the sheets stained? Had Shuichi left one of their playthings out?

Shuichi continued to yawn. Had Eiri tired him that much? He turned toward Shuichi and gently touched his face. "Are you okay?" Eiri asked, expecting him to perk up and give him a hard time about having caused another fire.

But Shuichi surprised him. He was nothing but supportive and concerned. He didn't tell Eiri he told him so. He didn't scold him for smoking in bed. He was . . . eerily nice about it. Maybe this was some ploy meant to break him.

At that moment, with Eiri holding the bottom of Shuichi's chin up, the lead firefighter stuck his head out the front door. Eiri could swear there was a knowing smirk on his face, but it was late and he was tired and a little bit drunk, so perhaps he imagined it. "We've got it under control, sir," he said, putting a slight emphasis on the word "sir." "We should be leaving shortly, and the two of you can get back to sleep." At the word "sleep," his face broke out into a wide grin.

Eiri groaned silently. Shuichi still seemed a bit dazed; perhaps the smoke had caused brain damage?

As the firefighters trooped out of the apartment for the second time in as many months, one of them stopped by Eiri and thrust a piece of paper and a pen at him. "My wife would kill me if I didn't ask her favorite author for his autograph."

Eiri groaned even more and silently ground his teeth, but he couldn't very well turn down a man who'd helped save his apartment and his butt, could he? He tried to focus as best he could and asked, "So how do you want this made out?"

"Could you dedicate it to Keiko, your biggest fan?" the man asked.

"Sure," Eiri sighed, and wrote the dedication before signing his pen name with a flourish.

"Thanks," the man said.

"And could Shindou-san please sign this for my daughter?" another firefighter asked.

Shuichi straightened up and smiled. "How should I address it?" he asked.

"Her name is Suki," the man said.

"Okay," Shuichi said, seizing the pen and writing in the neat characters he'd learned in school, "To Suki from her favorite singer, Shuichi Shindou."

"Great!" the man exclaimed. "My daughter will be so happy."

"I'm glad to give my fans back a little bit of the happiness they give me," Shuichi responded. Eiri stood in the corner unobtrusively rolling his eyes at the sentimentality. Surely this amount of sappiness would by itself have been enough to suppress the flames.

As they went by, one of the firefighters flicked an appreciative look at both of them, but mostly at Shuichi. Eiri's face flushed with anger at the man's lustful look.

Eiri continued to wait for the other shoe to drop and for Shuichi to torment him about having been the cause of a second fire in so many months after he'd ribbed Shuichi so mercilessly about the previous one, but he didn't. He thought this odd, and mentioned it when Tatsuha stopped by one day while Shuichi was being interviewed.

"I wonder why he hasn't given me more of a hard time about it." Eiri mused.

Tatsuha wasn't paying much attention. He had lost his Nittle Grasper Live at Budokan DVD for the third time – you wouldn't know it was so precious to him from the way he kept losing it – and was pawing through the cushions of his brother's couch looking for it. He stared in amusement at the tube of lube he found instead.

Looking up and smirking, he said, "Looks like he's been giving you a hard time –" the smirk wilted under Eiri's glare, which had 'none of your damn business' written all over it – "um, you do know he likes you as well as loves you? Although I don't know why, you big old grouch. So he doesn't like torturing you."

"I torture him. Isn't it basic human nature to torture back?"

Tatsuha sighed. For such a smart guy, his brother could be awfully thick. "He wants you to change and you haven't when you have every reason in the world to do so." He sat down. "You do remember that you wouldn't let him forget his slip-up? You certainly bored me to tears about it."

"Yeah, but he ruined my best pot and did a good job wrecking the kitchen. And he could have burnt the apartment down –"

Tatsuha interrupted. "Were you dropped on your head as a baby, _aniki_? You could have burned the apartment down too. Have you apologized?"

"Uh, no, I didn't do it on purpose, so I didn't think I had anything to apologize for."

"Did you inconvenience him?"

"Well, yeah, I had to wake him up – it wasn't easy, either."

"Was he in any danger?"

"I guess, if I hadn't yanked him out of there. Look, _I _saved his life. I woke him up and hustled him out of there –"

Tatsuha interrupted. "And who put him in danger in the first place? Fire ninjas?"

Eiri thought about it a minute and shook his head as if to clear it. "Well," he said haltingly, "I guess…I was the one who put him in danger in the first place. It was my cigarette that caused the fire."

"Bingo, bro! And how did that happen?"

"I wasn't paying attention to where I put the cigarette down. It turned out I put it on the nightstand instead of in the ashtray."

"And why weren't you paying attention?"

Eiri's eyes flashed. "Isn't that question a little too personal?"

Tatsuha laughed. "What that tells me is that sex had something to do with it. You weren't paying attention?"

Seeing as Tatsuha had guessed the obvious without him having to say anything, Eiri conceded, "I wasn't looking. I was tired and sore and wanted to go to sleep, so I put the cigarette down without rolling over to check where I put it."

"Well, bro," Tatsuha said, "I know you're apt to keel over where you stand when you've been working hard on a book. Haven't you ever heard of karma? Maybe you're not supposed to smoke in bed when you could fall asleep at any time."

Afterwards, Eiri thought about what Tatsuha said. He'd never admit it to Shuichi, but his harassment had been hurtful and unfair. He was a hypocrite for insisting Shuichi not cook when Shuichi hadn't insisted that he stop smoking in the bedroom. After all, even though he didn't own the place, Shuichi lived there too, and Eiri had been putting Shuichi's life at risk with his smoking, as well as his own.

After giving it some consideration, Eiri decided not to smoke in bed anymore. /1/ He didn't tell Shuichi about his decision, however, but let him figure it out on his own. Shuichi, being smarter than he's often given credit for, didn't say anything either, just kissed him longer, held him closer and hugged him tighter every time they retired to bed thereafter.

/FIN/

/1/ Wah! Does that mean he's no longer hot?

************************************************************************

A/N –I'm happy to warn against the dangers of careless smoking by tormenting one of my favorite characters. Kudos and thanks go to my beta, HawkClowd, who gave me several gentle shoves in directions that greatly improved the story.

The title came to me in a flash of inspiration. It was originally supposed to be "Firetruck", but after I typed the joke, the title seemed too pedestrian. Suddenly the possibility of adding an "s" jumped out at me. Firestruck? Like "Starstruck"? Anyway, in this story, unlike lightning, fire strikes twice in the same place, or at least the same apartment.

Hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! Please read and review.

_Yukata_ – short, usually cotton summer robe worn by men and women.

_Aniki_ – older brother.


End file.
